Who I am without you
by GoldSeven
Summary: Nathan post-explosion. How could his downward spiral to self-pity and alcoholism come about so quickly? My attempt at an explanation. Nathan-centric.


**Who I am without you**

**Characters**: Nathan, some Heidi, Angela, Monty and Simon; Peter (mentioned)

**Disclaimer**: Heroes is the property of Tim Kring and a bunch of other awesome people.

**Author's Note**: So we all assumed, watching "Four Months Later", that Nathan had spent the last four months wallowing in self-pity and alcoholism and growing that spectacular woolly beard, didn't we? Then along comes "Four Months Ago" and we find out that Heidi threw him out of the house just ten days or so after his release from hospital. What on earth happened during these ten days? This is how I see it. And no, I don't explain the beard.

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The last time he'd crossed this doorstep, he'd left the house for his campaign headquarters, his mind swirling with thoughts – whether he'd be elected, as Linderman had prophesied; and what would happen next, whether this house would still be standing in another twenty-four hours, or if it would all just be a nuclear waste. That had been three months ago. In another life. In _another's_ life.

Now, as he crossed it again, taking in the snow rendering the house and garden the perfect image of a picture postcard, some distant part of his mind insisted that he was coming home, but Nathan just couldn't bring himself to agree.

Heidi was walking next to him. Yes, walking. A part of him was still amazed at that, too, but the rest of him had just stopped being amazed. The boys were hanging back, skipping around making traces in the front yard, Simon starting a half-hearted snowball fight. They were exuberantly happy that he was back. Heidi held open the door, and smiled. She looked radiant, he thought, slightly distantly. Everything felt slightly distant. Even his own body felt strange.

"Welcome home," Heidi said, and he gave her a weak smile as he entered the house.

Up until two days ago, he'd been in hospital, ever since the night of the election, ever since he'd flown Peter up into the sky above New York.

To explode.

He hadn't planned on surviving. Truth be told, he hadn't planned on anything. Going down to Kirby Plaza – _flying_ down to Kirby Plaza – had been a lightning-quick decision that he hadn't permitted himself to think over. It had to be done. He had been right – Peter couldn't save the world. Nathan could. He was the only one who could. He hadn't dwelled on anything past that, as he knew it would only have made his resolve waver again. When Peter, about to explode high up in the air, had shouted at him to let him go, things had become complicated. Before that, everything had been easy in Nathan's mind. One bang, and that would have been it. He didn't want to let go, didn't want to think what odds he had of surviving at what sort of distance and with what sorts of injuries. He was not a friend of complicated.

Then Peter had pushed him away, and the next thing he knew after the bright light was lying in that hospital bed, alive but so horribly burned that he didn't recognize his own reflection, the only moments of waking being the ones before he pressed the button that upped the dose of painkillers on his IV again, resulting once more in blessed, drugged semi-consciousness. Three months. It had been two weeks before Heidi allowed the boys to see him, because they kept asking, unable to realize what their dad looked like, and since there was no hope of him ever healing, they knew they couldn't keep them away from him forever. Monty had cried, Simon had been too stunned to say a word, as if, by denying this was real, he could make it all go away.

And then, two days ago, he had woken to the absence of any sort of pain. Had looked down at himself and found that he was healed, all the burns, all the scars were just gone. He'd just got up and dressed, waiting to wake up from what surely had to be a dream. But the dream had just continued with an amazing persistence. The doctors had been utterly confounded and had run test after test with him, until Nathan was left wondering whether he had still any blood left in him. His mother had finally put a stop to that and pulled the right strings to make them let him go home; just as she had been the one, after the bomb, who had kept away the press, which had hoped for a scandal after the blatantly rigged election (no doubt Linderman had counted on the evidence being lost in the explosion), the supposed car crash with his supposedly suicidal younger brother, and the miraculous recovery of his wife's paralysis. Now they had another miracle to add to the Petrelli medical record.

Nathan had witnessed enough incredible things in the past year to know that it had not been a miracle, although he still had no idea what had happened. They'd asked him, time and time again, if he had noticed anything, and all he could tell them was that he hadn't. He had even had a few priests of various faiths dropping by, or trying to drop by, before Angela had put a stop to that, too.

One thing he had noticed, something that he hadn't even told his mother. From the pictures she had put up in his hospital room, one was missing. One of him and Peter.

"Take off your shoes, boys!" Heidi called to Monty and Simon, jerking Nathan from his thoughts. She looked at him expectantly. "Nathan, you know what I'd love now? Go for a walk. We haven't done that for nearly a year. Just you and I. Let's get the warm coats, the boys can play with Mandy, and we'll take a walk through the snow and be home again for dinner."

"Heidi…" How could he say this? "I can't. I… I need to be alone, I need to think. Okay? I just can't talk, not right now."

She looked so disappointed, but she nodded, watched him get his warm coat and head out again.

Nathan had no idea where to go, just wandered aimlessly as the thoughts whirled in his head, just as aimlessly. It seemed as if his mind, after being drugged for so long, was trying to make up for the time it had lost. After all this time, even thinking clearly felt unfamiliar, as unfamiliar as being able to move his left arm or see on his left eye.

He knew what Heidi, what the boys were thinking. Everything was back to normal now. Heidi was out of her wheelchair. He was out of hospital. Forget the last year, start over. Forget the election and everything that had happened around it.

He did agree on that count. The election seemed so distant, so completely inconsequential now. He cared about that a lot less than Heidi probably thought he did.

But so much more had happened during the last year, so much that they had only caught glimpses of, if that. So many things that made it impossible for him to return to any kind of life he had known before it all started. From the moment he'd flown out of the driver seat on the highway to see the car crash twenty feet below him, he had known that life as he knew it was over. He'd tried to deny it for a long time, but he knew there was no going back, not now, not ever.

And the only person who could have helped him figure out what a new kind of life might be like was gone.

"I don't know who I am without you," he'd told Peter in a rare, candid moment just a few days before the election. Back then, he hadn't known yet how true it was. Who was he now? The district attorney who flew straight out of a speeding car? The candidate for Congress who'd nearly sacrificed .07 of the world population to get elected into office? How could his wife or children have any answer to that?

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Nathan wasn't back for dinner. In fact, he was back long after the boys had gone to bed, even though Heidi had allowed them to stay up a lot longer than usual, because they wanted to see him when he got back. She told him how disappointed they'd been. She didn't have to tell him how disappointed _she_ was; he knew. He didn't feel up to talking to her. He'd considered, fleetingly, to try and tell her what was going on with him, but he had no idea where to start.

Just when he was sure she was going to start making reproaches, she said, quietly, "Nathan… I know. I'm sorry about Peter. It'll take time… but eventually, you have to let go." Her understanding was so maddeningly like Peter sometimes. He'd noticed that before, over the years, and it only felt worse now.

"Peter's not dead," he said curtly, and saw her frown and draw back slightly.

Heidi went to bed soon after that, but Nathan didn't. He sat in the living-room until long after midnight downing an entire bottle of Bourbon. After the first half, he was pleased to notice that his head finally stopped churning out all those disturbing thoughts, going back to something resembling the blankness he'd grown accustomed to over the last months. It felt comforting, and welcome.

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"Your mother called, Nathan."

Nathan blinked and squinted up at Heidi from where he'd fallen asleep in his chair. His head and neck ached, but even that was welcome as it was something to occupy his mind.

"What she want?"

"Asking us over for lunch. I said we'd be there at twelve." She didn't sound angry, although she had to see the empty bottle, and probably smelled the alcohol on him, too.

Nathan straightened a little. "I don't wanna see her."

Heidi frowned. "Why not? Since when? We spent so much time in her house last year, after your father died."

"Maybe too much." Nathan got up with a groan.

"Nathan… I can understand you wanted to be alone yesterday. I really can. But you… we need to pick up our lives again. Okay?"

She didn't say anything about moving on this time, and didn't mention Peter, thankfully. He gave a noncommittal grunt and started to head for the bathroom.

"Nathan," Heidi said, a slightly pleading tone in her voice. "Try not to let the children see you like this."

"They're at school, aren't they?" Nathan said.

"It's a Saturday, Nathan. They're up in Simon's room."

"Ah."

He left her standing there and went to the bathroom, wondering if there was any way he could wheedle out of meeting his mother. Yes, she had all the answers he wanted, there was no doubt in his head about that. But he also knew Angela would never give them to him. So many lies, all his life; why would she stop lying to him now? Sometimes he thought she believed them all herself, lived in a carefully built, delicate construction of her own pretty lies that glossed over her entire life. He'd lived in that construct until last year too, and now that it had collapsed for him, there was nothing in its place.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror and considered shaving. The old Nathan would have done it automatically, even more so when he was about to visit his mother. Hell, anybody. But he found that the new Nathan couldn't bring himself to care.

When he turned away, from the corner of his eye, he saw something staring out at him from the mirror – a horribly disfigured, burned face.

He turned away.

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"No need to beat about the bush, Ma. Go ahead. Say it."

Angela Petrelli took a sip from her espresso cup and cast her son a carefully guarded look. Monty and Simon had gone out into the garden, a whole untouched mass of snow just waiting to be used for snowball fights, and Heidi had gone to check on them, as Monty was crying his lungs out that his older brother was shoving snow down his jacket.

"I don't need to say anything, Nathan, you know you can't keep this up forever. Talk to McKinley at the office, about when you're getting back to work. He's been running things for you very well. It's perfectly fine if you don't go back just now, everybody will understand. But get your life back in order, Nathan."

"Get my life back in order?" he echoed bitterly. "Yeah, I know. Keep up a semblance of normality while I put on my costume at night and play Spider-Man? It's not gonna happen, Ma. And then what? Watch the boys and see what'll become of them? Why, hadn't you thought about that? What will they be able to do, what do you think? And how will they find out? Will Simon accidentally fry the cat when he's fourteen? Or do you think they'll get lucky and not develop any powers before they're almost forty, like I did?"

He could tell that he'd hurt her, and felt some vicious satisfaction at it. Angela set down her cup and drew up straighter in her chair. "I never said that it was easy, Nathan. But whatever you do, it won't just go away no matter how much you wish for it. Get ready to deal with it. And once you are ready, I'll be there to help."

He glowered at her, and pushed himself out of the chair.

"I don't want your help." He turned and headed for the hall. "Simon, Monty! Heidi – we're leaving." He saw Heidi and the kid's shocked faces, but didn't care, just continued towards the front door, pausing to get his coat – Heidi and the boys were already wearing theirs – even remembering to take Heidi's handbag, and then stopping at the small key cabinet in the hall.

He opened it and, scanning the contents, reached for a single key with a neatly lettered green label reading _Peter_. He remembered that Peter had been reluctant to leave his parents a key for his apartment, but had finally done so after accidentally locking himself out twice in one month, about two years ago.

Angela appeared in the hall. "If you change your mind, I'll be there. Just get yourself back together. And for God's sake, do something about your hair."

Nathan didn't reply, just pocketed the key, daring her to tell him to leave it, and went out to the car.

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Two days later, Nathan stood in Peter's apartment, looking around and feeling a pang as he realised it was exactly as he must have left it. Apparently, his mother had even sent someone to clean every once in a while; there wasn't even dust on the many bookshelves along the walls. Whether she had done this because she, too, still thought Peter was alive and might be coming back, or whether she simply hadn't been able to deal with the apartment yet, Nathan was glad it was still there. It was a refuge, a place that didn't expect him to be anything he didn't want to be, or couldn't be.

Nathan half expected a Leslie Nielsen moment when he opened the fridge, just out of curiosity, but it was empty except for a few water bottles. No month-old Chinese takeaways. He closed it again with a sigh and went back to Peter's living-room, sitting in a chair and looking at book titles and posters until his eyes fell on a large cardboard box on top of one of the bookshelves. The lid was ajar and Nathan saw the edge of a photograph poking out.

Slowly, automatically, he got up and lifted the box from the shelf. Inside, there were what looked to be hundreds of photographs, stacked into more or less neat piles in the left hand-corner but simply lying in a heap in the rest of the box, as if Peter had planned to go through them all chronologically and maybe make a scrapbook or paste them in an album, but had never got round to it. The top photo, the one Nathan had seen sticking out from under the lid, was one of him and Peter fishing. It must have been in the early eighties; Nathan had been 15 or 16, Peter three or four, accordingly. Nathan wasn't sure when exactly it had been. They'd stayed in the same holiday home in the Adirondacks almost every year.

Nathan picked up a random photo from the untidy pile, which looked to be from some sort of trip with Peter's classmates from nursing school. He'd seen some of the faces at Peter's graduation party last year. He flipped though a few of the top ones, showing people mainly goofing off for the camera, but Peter wasn't it them – well, obviously, he'd taken these photos.

He put them back, careful not to mess them up any further, and reached for the stack in the top left corner. True enough, they turned out to be childhood photos. Nathan recognized most of them; they were copies of photos their parents had in their albums. Nathan hadn't known that Peter had had copies made of all those photos. He looked at a picture of himself, thirteen, trying to feed a completely messy baby brother. He even remembered that photo. It was one of those "for the record" shots that their father had always loved so much, even if they didn't really reflect reality. There were more like those, of him and Peter fishing, more of Peter alone, some family portraits and even some of Nathan before Peter had been born.

Nathan spent an hour looking at photographs, barely noticing that it was getting dark outside. Some sense of duty inside him was telling him that he ought to go. He got up, picked up a few selected photographs and headed out, but just before he opened the door, he reconsidered, and stuck the photos into the frame of the large mirror on the wall.

Just when he turned his head, he saw it again, that monstrous, burned face that had already stared at him from his own bathroom mirror two days ago.

He fled, closing the door behind him, but didn't go home, instead getting stranded in a bar half a block from Peter's apartment. Too many thoughts, many too many, and none of them thoughts he wanted to deal with right then. He silenced them with Scotch.

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The confrontation finally came four days later, as he had known it must. He hadn't exactly tried very hard to make Heidi understand, had spent a lot of time away from her and the boys, some of it at Peter's, a lot more in bars. He thought he'd acted responsible in that, at least, not getting drunk at home again, but doing it somewhere else and coming home after the kids were in bed. But Heidi didn't seem to see it as particularly responsible.

"Nathan – you can't go on like this." She was up late; she must have been waiting for him to come home. She wasn't shouting, she didn't look angry, even. Not even now. "I've been wanting to give you some time to readjust – I know it must have been hard for you, a lot harder that it was for me after that accident – but I really can't see you getting anywhere! You're away most of the time, the boys haven't seen you in two days, which is probably for the best in either case – Nathan, I want to help you, but you have to let me!"

He glanced down at his shoes. He was swaying slightly where he stood, but he felt almost sober. _You can't help_, he thought. _Nobody can help. I'm just not ready for this_.

He saw her drawing a deep breath, as if what she was going to say next took all the courage she could muster. "Nathan, when you were in hospital, your mother told me again of your father's depression. If I can't help you, see a doctor. Please, Nathan – you don't seem to be able to get out of this on your own, let's find someone who can help you!"

Mention of his mother finally broke Nathan's silence. "Let me guess what she told you," he snarled. "That my father had delusions of grandeur, thought he was invincible, and that made him kill himself? That Peter was just the same, and I was going the same way? I've heard these lies for years now, Heidi. None of it is true. The – the truth is a lot worse than that."

She was hanging on his words, her expression torn between being thrilled at hearing the truth – and fearing that it would just be another cock-and-bull story. _All right_, Nathan thought. _Give her the whole cock-and-bull story. Every little bit of it_.

"You think crazy runs in our family? You have no idea what sort of crazy. You remember when you woke up after the accident last year, and told me you'd seen me hovering over the car? How I told you you were delirious? You weren't. It's what happened. I flew out of the car. I didn't mean to, but it happened. Yeah, Peter can fly too. He can do a couple of other things as well. I tried to tell you, last month, was it?, he was part of a plot of Linderman's to blow up New York. Every word I said back then was true. There wasn't a car crash. Not this time. Peter exploded, above New York, because_ I'd_ flown him up there, so he wouldn't take out the city. And I know he's not dead. I just know he's not."

Heidi was staring at him, her face pale. For a moment, Nathan actually thought she believed him, until she whispered, "Get out, Nathan. You're mad. If you do something about your condition, you may come back. I'll still be there to help. But until then, don't dare come here again, or go near the boys, tell them any of _this_. Your mother was right. Get out. _Now_."

"You know it's true. You said yourself you'd seen it. And your legs? Linderman _healed_ you, Heidi."

"I was delirious. And it seems you still are. I'm not listening to any of this any longer. You're drunk, Nathan. Don't make me call the cops."

He could just have flown there and then. Proved that he was right. But what good would it have done? Maybe it was easier like this. For her, and for the kids. Let them go on believing he was delusional.

So much easier.

Nathan turned and walked out of the door without any further word.


End file.
